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I hope our students and teachers will find some interesting new sites and tools here to make learning and creating content easier and more engaging.

PARENTS AND FRIENDS: PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT. OUR KIDS LOVE TO KNOW OTHERS ARE READING AND ENJOYING THEIR WORK.

Please look at the categories, located to the right of this post and just below the Voki cartoon. I will be organizing posts in categories to make it easier for you to find the good stuff faster. This blog is a new and growing online environment, so check back often and please add your voice by commenting and contributing! To add a comment to a post, click on the title of the post and then scroll down the page. Also, please check out the student work on our companion wikispace! ps196q.wikispaces.com.

IMPORTANT RULES ABOUT COMMENTS BY STUDENTS!

Never use your full name. First names (and last initial if needed) only. You can include your class number so I will know who you are.

Keep your comments positive and the language appropriate. Your parents, teachers, assistant principal and principal will be able to read what you write. Make them proud of you!

I will try to respond to comments in a timely manner — I’m aiming for twice a week at the minimum (but since I am such a geeky person, I will probably get back to you faster!)

You can add comments to other peoples’ comments — again, keep your tone and language positive and helpful.

All comments are moderated. That means no one gets published until the comment is approved by the administrators of the blog. If your comment doesn’t show up and you wonder why, feel free to ask me about it.

If we follow the rules, blogging will be a great way for us to communicate and collaborate safely in a great learning community online!

If you have any technology-related questions, please write them as a comment to this post and I will do my best to answer them as accurately and quickly as possible. This is the appropriate place for students to post their questions to me.

For parents and adults who would prefer a personal response, instead of adding to the comment thread, please complete the form below, including your email. After you complete the form. click on “Submit.” Your information will be sent directly to my email and will not appear on the blog.

The year of 2017 has brought much excitement. Now, 2018 has come and has swept in amazing events. Let’s get started →

Recommended Contests

ACCEPTING ENTRIESImaginormous Challenge Open to all children in the U.S. aged 5-12, submit your idea in 100 words or fewer for a chance to win one of five incredible prizes: a tremendous toy design, an immersive Minecraft world, becoming an author, or a candy creation. For more information, click here.

ENDS ON MAY 1, 2018.

ACCEPTING ENTRIESThe Betty Award The Betty Award has both a spring and fall contest. This writing contest is open to all children, worldwide ages 8-10. For more information, click here. This contest contains at $15 reading fee.

ALWAYS ACCEPTING ENTRIES.

ACCEPTING ENTRIESScholastic Book Clubs Scholastic Book Clubs features a wide range of contests for all children in all grades in the U.S. Check out some of the latest contests here.

ALWAYS ACCEPTING ENTRIES.

Look for It

TICKETS AVAILABLEMaker Faire Maker Faire is an event created by Make magazine which features engineering, science projects, and tech. It currently comes to California, Michigan, and New York. Check it out.

Fourth grade students have been busy writing original mystery stories based illustrations from Chris Van Allsburg’s “The Mystery of Harris Burdick.” After they wrote their stories on a Google Doc, they recorded them in Garageband and enhanced them with a musical soundtrack. Click HERE AND HERE to listen to their amazing stories! Please leave a comment on the blog after you listen to the stories. Students love feedback!

This week, tens of millions of students in 180 countries around the world will be participating in the Hour of Code, an international event designed to promote student interest in coding and programming through a wide range of fun activities. At PS 196Q we have participated in this event for the past few years and without exception, the students in all grades, from Pre K through fifth grade, are totally engaged in the activities. This year, I’ve decided to use the Minecraft activities on the Code.org site, which have been expanded to allow students to create games using blockly code and directional arrow keys on their keyboards. Please encourage your children to continue these activities, all of which are free, at home with you. It’s never too late to learn code!

Our Thursday morning tech enrichment group has been busy working with Ozobot robots. We programmed them using line programming on plain white paper with tracks we drew with washable broad tip markers. Then we started adding the code using color dot stickers to coordinate with our master code sheet. Here’s a link to a short video clip of our programmers and their Ozobots in action.

Third graders are finishing their endangered animal graphic novels and you can see them HERE! Click on your child’s class and then on their comic. We will be uploading more comics as they are completed. Please leave a comment on this post after you have read your child’s story. Thanks!

We watched a video recording of Margaret Wise Brown’s “The Important Book” and then used Pixie to write our own “Important Book Poems.” To see and hear our terrific poetry, click HERE. Please leave a comment on this post after you have listened to our work. We will be adding more and more finished books to our wiki in the next few weeks.

First grade students have been writing multi-page books in Pixie about the Four Seasons (not the rock group, but the geographical four seasons, also known as Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall). I’m uploading them to our wiki as they are completed. To see them, CLICK HERE.

So excited to be holding our Hour of Code classes all next week! The Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries. We will explore Code.org and students will get to solve challenges featuring familiar digital characters such as Angry Birds, characters from Star Wars and Frozen, Minecraft and new this year, Moana! Solving these challenges introduces and provides practice using skills such as sequencing, conditional statements, debugging and more. If you want to join your child by participating just go to Code.organd select a challenge. You might find you love programming too!

We are nearing the end of our Week of Code and almost every class has had the opportunity to try their hand at programming a wide range of challenges, even Pre-K! (We did Kodable as a group and they were awesome!). I hope all of the students, and their families give coding a chance. It provides a great exercise for the brain! And it’s a lot of fun too!